Co-owner Darek Bell and brewer Jay Settle check out a new batch of whiskey at the Corsair Distillery. / John Partipilo / The Tennessean

Written by

Ryan Underwood

In case you didn’t get the official memo, Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon — even the cheap moonshine made in both places — have become the trendy liquor of choice within fashionable culinary circles.

I happened to get the memo in the form of a recent national magazine assignment that last month took me (and a few friends) to profile some of the businesses profiting from Kentucky’s bourbon boomlet.

And what I saw there opened my eyes to a remarkable network of established mega-multinational corporations working alongside a growing number of startup artisan distilleries in a geographically tight, mutually profitable ecosystem.

Forget any notions you might have of backwoods stills pumping out cheap hooch amid trailer-strewn heaps of rural decay.

Kentucky’s old-money bourbon barons, as well as its purist newcomers, have every bit of cultural savvy and sophistication as their Sonoma and Napa Valley peers. Riding along the Bourbon Trail these days is like something out of a scene from the movie Sideways, except with a banjo motif.

It’s also not just the distilleries that are benefiting from this uptick in sales of Southern spirits. Everything from bottle and barrel makers to shipping and distribution companies have seen their fortunes rise. An economic impact study published this year by University of Louisville economist Paul Coomes finds that the companies working within the bourbon supply chain provide the state with 8,690 jobs and a total annual payroll of $413 million. That’s more than double the number of jobs and payroll totals for Kentucky’s distillery industry itself.

Profits are growing, too. Kentucky distilleries ship about $2.5 billion in products annually to 126 countries around the world. And from 2005 to 2010, gross revenues in the U.S. of Tennessee whiskey and Kentucky bourbon have grown 23 percent, reflecting a shift toward more of the high-end “craft” products, according to Coomes’ research.

The bad news in all of this is that aside from Jack Daniel Distillery (owned by Kentucky-based Brown-Forman), Tennessee’s spirits industry is nowhere near the size or profitability of our neighbor to the north. The good news is that several Nashville-area companies are gaining traction to help the state catch up and hopefully share in some of the gains of the industry overall.

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Foremost among these is Corsair Artisan Distillery. The founding partners expertly mingle their nerdly interests in various grains and copper contraptions together with a philosophical bent completely in sync with the movement toward locally produced artisan products.

“We incorporated in 2008 and in doing our research for the company, we found there was a strong demand specifically for craft distillers,” said Corsair co-founder Andrew Webber. “Part of it has to do with a renewed interest in classic mixology. And like the community that coalesced around craft beer in the 1990s, you’ve now begun to see that happening in the spirits industry.”

Local touch sells

More and more entrepreneurs are recognizing — and starting to seize — those opportunities. Mike Williams, a former state representative from Williamson County, whose Collier and McKeel line of whiskey is made at the Corsair distillery, said people are increasingly looking for unique products that go beyond mass-market tastes.

There’s also something about having a good story for your product, he said. “For me, that means putting my thumbprint on every single bottle that we sell. It tells people that the owner cares about quality.”

One of the latest local entrants into the booze bonanza is Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery, a producer originally established in Robertson County in 1867. Its line of “Nelson’s Best” whiskey was a local sensation until Tennessee’s prohibition laws kicked in just after the turn of the century. Now, the company is being revived by the owner’s descendants, Charlie and Andy Nelson, starting with their recent launch of Belle Meade Bourbon.

Nashville isn’t the only place witnessing the rise of micro-distilleries. According to a report in Time last week covering the American Distilling Institute Conference, the number of these operations has grown from 50 in 2005 to 250 today. Nor is it just distilleries that are capitalizing on the craft spirits craze. Nashville’s Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. is making a new bourbon brittle using discarded casks from Corsair and other distilleries.

And Jackalope Brewing Co., a local beer maker, is aging an ale in old rye whiskey barrels from Nelson’s Green Brier. Even the Catbird Seat restaurant makes, as I hazily recall, a to-die-for smoked ice cream by burning wood from former whiskey barrels.

And — shameless plug alert — I, too, got bit by the bourbon bug after my reporting trip to Kentucky, helping to start a new website dedicated to all things pork-and-whiskey called PigsAndPours.com.

Is this revitalized interest in whiskey and bourbon a fad that will pass? Absolutely. But as one Kentucky distillery owner told me, the trend will simply move on to another market, most likely to South Korea or China next.

What matters most, he said, is that the profits will stay right here at home.